


Let Me Be Weak

by MajorMinor



Series: Tumblr One Shots [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, One Shot, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-25 23:12:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18711610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorMinor/pseuds/MajorMinor
Summary: Natasha struggles with seeing the man Clint has become in the last five years





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> short request i got on tumblr last night, i really liked writing it so thought i'd post it here too!

The entire ride from the airport to the hotel, Nat was restless. At first she had tried to rationalize her nerves as restlessness from going somewhere that wasn’t within the confines of the Avengers HQ for the first time in five years. Sure, she had gone into New York every once in a while to decompress, but that was almost always at the order of Steve or Rhodey. She was determined to undo Thanos’ work, and duty was always calling with every Avenger spread out across the globe and galaxy at any given point in time. 

But she knew that rationalization was a false one. She had been to Tokyo more times than she could count for missions, with both Shield and the Red Room. No, she wasn’t afraid of being away from the compound, Steve was perfectly capable of doing her job just as well, if not better, than she could. 

_ What he’s doing here, what he’s been doing for the last couple of years, Natasha, I don’t think there’s any bringing him back.  _

Rhodey’s warning from a few days before had been on a constant loop in her head since she boarded the plane at JFK. He was wrong, he  _ had _ to be wrong. For her sake, she hoped that Clint could be better than what he had become. That he could pull back from all the carnage and come home. 

* * *

It took several hours longer to locate Clint than she had originally anticipated. She had ignored Rhodey’s advice of bringing any weapons or equipment that might help expedite her search. In the chance that she did find him, and he did retaliate, she didn’t want to come off as hostile. Grief does things to a mind that makes a person push past any logic, and she wasn’t willing to test how far Clint had been pushed.

A small fragment of her hoped that she wouldn’t find him, that she could toss this entire thing up as a loss and get back to the real job at hand. There wasn’t a single living creature alive that hadn’t lost someone in the snap, she shouldn’t feel so obligated to save a single person when there were quite literally trillions more hoping for a solution. It felt selfish for her to fly all this way for one man, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to move on if she didn’t at least try. 

She had spent the entire evening with the news playing on the television as she scrolled through local live updates, hoping for some sort of blip on the radar. It was slower than if she had just tapped into local Yakuza communications, but that barrier of not knowing, not confirming Rhodey’s news was oddly comforting. 

It was well past eight o’clock when she saw a news update that looked promising. A news anchor told of an ongoing investigation into the deaths of local gang members, killed by what appeared to be multiple stab wounds, ones made by someone with expertise in handling swords. Natasha sighed and turned off the tv. It took several minutes of gathering up her courage before she could finally get dressed and leave the room. 

Fighting an army of aliens twice was easy. Trying to bring someone you loved off the edge of an oblivion they made for themselves was nothing she had ever prepared for, or would have expected, to be something she needed to do in her life. If things had been the other way around, if she had been the one to not fight against Thanos, had stayed away from it all like Clint had, would she have turned out the same? Did she have it in her to hold that much vengeance against people that had nothing to do with what she was working so hard to try and undo? Would Clint have come after her if she did? 

She shook the thought out of her head. Of course he would. He made a different call all those years ago when she had a gun to his face and had beat him to a pulp, if he knew there was still good in her then, he would do the same for her if she was in his shoes now. As she made her way through the city to where the attacks the night before had happened, she hoped and prayed that the Clint that had saved her then would allow himself to be saved now. 

* * *

She almost laughed when she heard the first screams coming down the street.  _ Follow the screaming.  _ She never thought a line from the second worst  _ Jurassic Park  _ would come in handy now. 

He was less than fifty feet in front of her, wiping his sword of the blood of the Yakuza leader he had just stabbed. Against all logic, the man at his feet was still alive. He was dying slowly, and Natasha waited for him finish the job. Even if he had become a murderer the last five years, at the very least, she hoped he hadn’t become merciless. But he simply stood over the man’s body, watching the life drain from his eyes. 

“You shouldn’t be here.” Clint finally said, taking off his mask and hood. He turned to face her. 

Even now, after all these years apart, after all the blood he had shed, all of Rhodey’s warnings against him, and all the nights she had gone to sleep trying to push him out of his mind, her heart still skipped a beat when she saw him. 

“Neither should you.” she said, swallowing hard against the lump growing in her throat. 

What the hell was there even to say next? She had five years to think on this reunion, but in those scenarios, he had come back to her. He had come back tired and looking for home, sorry that he had left to begin with. But what could she do with the man in front of her? 

“Barton,” she started. Saying his last name felt foreign now. She had said it so many times over the years, but when they finally admitted their feelings for each other, there hadn’t been a day where she hadn’t called him Clint. Five years and a trillion bodies between them now, she wasn’t sure what to say. “We can bring them back. It’s a long shot, but,” 

“Don’t.” Clint said, his voice short and clipped. “Don’t do this Nat.” 

Nat. Not Romanoff, not Natasha, Nat. It was too personal, nobody else could get away with calling her that. He still cared. 

“It’s a chance to undo this. You can make all of this right again.” 

He walked toward her. “I had my chance to help, and I didn’t.” 

“And what are you doing now?” 

“I’m making things right. These men,” Clint gestured to the bodies on the ground, “They were murderers.”

“And what does this,” she glanced down at the Yakuza boss, “make you?” Her voice was steady somehow, but she was a wreck on the inside. She didn’t want to be doing this. All she wanted to do was pull him into her arms and let the troubles of the last five years melt away for just a moment. She wanted to forget that Thanos was the reason Clint was here in the first place. She wanted to forget that she had just seen him kill a man without mercy, she wanted to take him back to the hotel and into bed, and just lay next to him for hour, after hour, after hour. She wanted to be weak. But instead, she kept her head. She told him about the time heist.

“Don’t,” he said, “Don’t give me hope.” his face and voice finally cracking through the stoicism he had kept up. 

“Clint,” a tear rolled down her cheek, “at least come home. You don’t belong here.” 

She reached out for his hand and squeezed it. Clint interlocked his fingers with her’s. It wasn’t what she wanted, or what she needed, but it was a start. She called a cab, and lead him on the way back home for the last time. 


	2. And Dream Of Sheep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone requested that i write a second part to this, and again, really liked writing it, so here ya go

When they got back to the hotel room, Natasha tried to rack her brain for what her plan had been for when she got Clint to come back with her. In all honesty, there hadn’t been much of a plan in the first place. She hadn’t told anybody but Rhodey that she was coming here in the first place, and that was only because he knew that her days of radio silence after he told her of Clint’s actions in Mexico knew that she was sitting on a plan. 

“You don’t have to do this you know,” Rhodey had said, “If he wanted to come back, he would have already.” 

Natasha had shook her head. “I know what it’s like to go down that path. To just feel, to feel lost, and angry. He needs someone to pull him out, and I’m the only person he’ll listen to.” 

Rhodey hadn’t protested after that. Just wished her well, and offered to pay for her plane ticket and hotel. She had declined, just because the world’s economy was at a stand still didn’t mean she was strapped for cash. 

Clint standing in the overly plush hotel room made him look like a prop out of place on a period drama set. He was soaked from head to toe in rain, his hair was a mess, and he smelled. She hoped that his appearance was a side effect of traveling constantly and not anything mental. 

“There’s fresh towels in the bathroom. I brought my own body wash if you don’t wanna use the hotel soap.” Natasha said, sitting on the edge of the bed. She was trying to make herself look as non threatening as possible. They hadn’t seen each other for more than a couple of hours since he was arrested for going against the Sokovia Accords. When he took his plea and returned back to the farm, Natasha had gone to see him, but there was already a thorn between them that wouldn’t heal easily. That and the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be in contact with any current acting Avengers or anyone else that Steve had broken out of jail. It had been a bitter couple of weeks after she had left him, but she buried herself back in work, traveling with Steve, trying to right yet another wrong in the world. 

“Thanks.” was all he said. He went into the bathroom and when the door closed, Natasha let out a sigh. She laid down on her back, listening to the shower running. She hoped that he still sung in the shower like he used to in the apartment they had together in DC, back when Shield was still there giving steady paychecks, they could take time off, and were easy. 

Out of all the things Thanos and the accords had taken from her, she missed how easy things had been between she and Clint. When Clint built the farm, it was a sign to her that they could actually leave someday and live in that ease that flowed so smoothly between them for the rest of their lives. She hoped that that would still be a possibility for them when it was all said and done. 

She got up off the bed and to her suitcase to change into her pajamas. She had booked a double room, and was starting to regret it. That selfishness crept back up again. She hoped that he wouldn’t want to sleep away from her. All these years apart, but he had come with her so easily. True, he hadn’t come home after the snap, but that had to be good for something. It wouldn’t make sense to her if he had only come back to fight with them. He had made it pretty clear that once his probation was up, he was out, for good this time. Whether Natasha would join him or not wasn’t a conversation that had been given the chance to have. But all that time he had spent alone, all those nights she had gone to bed without him there, but constantly on her mind, she missed him more than she could put into words. Surely he ha to feel the same. He had to have at least missed waking up next to someone. 

The bathroom door opened, and Clint stepped out wrapped in a towel at the waist, Natasha stood in the middle of the room in her sleep shirt and shorts. “You wouldn’t have happened to pack anything in my size, would you?” he asked. He was being serious, but that jovial tone that he always managed to have about him no matter if they were taking out human traffickers in Berlin, or wrapped in each other’s arms while watching  _ Chicago _ . 

“Uh, no. But I’m pretty sure this place has a laundromat downstairs. I can send em down if you want.” Natasha said, already walking to pick up the phone and call room service. 

Clint hadn’t answered, just walked to the furthest from the window and leaned back against the pillows, his eyes already drifting shut. How long had it been since he got a proper night’s sleep? The last time he had slept somewhere this comfortable? Being a murderous vigilante surely didn’t pay well enough to afford a place like this. 

A room attendant came by and picked up Clint’s clothes, and by then he had already rolled onto his side, breathing deeply as he fell asleep. Natasha had hoped for more out of their reunion, but they would have more time later. Back on the farm where they wouldn’t have to worry about work, or saving the next country or planet from batshit warlords. 

At some point in the night, she heard him stirring. He had never been a heavy sleeper, but the room and the city outside was silent. Natasha turned on the lamp on her nightstand and saw him turning in his sleep. 

“Clint.” she whispered, slowly getting out of bed. “Clint. Can you hear me?” She walked over to him, gently laying her hands on him to keep him still. She tried to ignore the shock that went through her at touching his bare skin again, but fuck it felt good. 

He was hot all over, and for a moment she feared he had caught a fever from the rain, but his body was slick with sweat. “Clint, just listen for my voice, okay?” she instructed, rubbing her hand back and forth gently across his arm. “It’s okay. You’re safe. No one can hurt you here.” Gradually, he stilled again. “Good, good.” Natasha said. 

When he had calmed down, he opened his eyes and met her gaze. “Natasha.” he said softly. 

“You were having a nightmare.” she explained. “It’s okay though. You’re fine. Go back to sleep.” she started to walk back to her side of the room, but Clint reached out for her hand and took it. 

“Stay with me. Please.”

Natasha was facing away from him, and for a moment she almost let go. There was time for this later. This was strictly for work she tried telling herself. It was pointless though. Five years, five long fucking years, and she had him again. Work and her rational feelings aside, she needed him and he needed her. 

She nodded and crawled into bed beside him. He was naked underneath the covers as he had kicked the towel off some point in the night, but she wrapped herself around him anyway. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen each other naked, and done much more together before. 

She laced her fingers around the back of his neck and ran her fingers through his hair. They sat in silence for what felt like ages. Her arms wrapped around him, their legs intertwined, faces mere centimeters apart. She didn’t know who leaned forward first, but at some point they were kissing. It didn’t lead anywhere, but  the feel of her body against his, her mouth on his, felt better than any kind of intimate reunion she could have imagined. 

 

* * *

 

The wake-up call Natasha had scheduled the day before came at the same time the room attendant did with Clint’s clothes. She woke him up and packed what few things she had taken out of her suitcase. The cab to the airport was short, and the plane ride back to the Avengers HQ felt even shorter. After that night, she didn’t want to return to the madness of trying to save the world again. She wanted to stay suspended in the air for as long as possible, dreaming that this was just another routine mission, their last one maybe, before retiring to the farm like they had agreed to. But the plane landed, Rhodey picked them up from the airport, and the world still needed saving. But G-d, what she wouldn’t have given to have another night in that hotel room, away from it all, and think of a million ways to try again. 


End file.
